


Rotten Trees

by SouthernBird



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman Zero | Mega Man Zero
Genre: Apocalypse, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Elf Wars, Heartbreak, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Implied Violence, M/M, Mentions of character 'death', Pain, Past Relationship(s), Temporarily Unrequited Love, Zero isn't particularly dead but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 12:22:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15485637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernBird/pseuds/SouthernBird
Summary: "X..." the demon breathes, hot and acrid through the slits of his mouth guard as he inches further into proximity, "why do you still fight against me? Against us? Against the world we could have together?”





	Rotten Trees

**Author's Note:**

> It is terribly hard to believe that my last attempt at anything related to Rockman/Megaman was written over ten years ago. Well, here we are. 
> 
> HUGE thanks goes out to the X/Zero discord where I original wrote out the idea, and to JanitorBot and The Kat Warrior for both pitching in and helping me a lot with editing! It felt good to flex the angst muscles again for X and Zero because, well... they're pretty much the epitome of angst, haha.

It had been an ambush, a trap that X should have sniffed out days ago when the first radio signal that promised a location and a time solely for him and him alone eked through the static planes of a connection that should have died years ago.

 

Now, instead, he feels the rattling of the moment the back of his cracked helmet slams into the unforgiving earth while warning blares sound in a heralding dismal tone of an impending end. For a split second, any attempt to tap into his reserves to sip up any drop of energy that can drive his limbs into another exhaustive barrage of battle falls to naught, and any idea that this war may end so they both can rest flutters away with the dust of the decaying impact zone.

 

Above him there is a growl, the body atop his own rumbling lowly in a possessive croon that makes his prone form tremble in a bittersweet reminder of a once intimacy, the same demon wrecking havoc upon all life who sings songs in the colder, lonelier hours of the night.

 

_“Come to me.”_

 

"X..." the demon breathes, hot and acrid through the slits of his mouth guard as he inches further into proximity, "why do you still fight against me? Against _us?_ Against the world we could have together?”

 

For all his life, for every scrap of bolt and metal that composes a body built by the careful, gentle hands of a man with too many hopes and dreams, X resents that he cannot give in. To give in to this monster, this hellish bastardization of the man he loves— no, _loved_ — more than the world itself would be an end promised with sultry pounds of war unending. However, before he can even utter a defiance, there are suddenly claws at his thighs, a purr tinged with poisonous lust rubbing his throbbing ears as though to draw another reply. There is a nick along the thick of his upper thighs, and if there is a God, may they hear his prayers, for X is already dreading what this sensation might entail.

 

“You think too much— you could spread yourself again for me, X. I will make you forget your pride... for just a little while, if you’d let me.” 

 

The command is irrevocably simple and rings with an age old memory of his Zero, of the other’s strength and his love above him while moonlight spilled through the glass windows of their shared quarters on base. Even now, X can hear the sickening twist of the adoration those once blue eyes held in the depths of his sensors and his core reverberating with a musky tone.

 

Falling in love was a downfall for both of them, and it is a longing to drift back down into the arms that he fights against every single damn day.

 

But— “you're not Zero," X whispers through his gritted teeth as claws force his thighs apart for the sake of accommodation. "He... he would never—.”

 

"You think too softly of me,” Omega, this not-Zero, mutters with a swift retraction of his armor, allowing the languid beast to ease ever closer, to let their lips brush with a perverse pledge of screams drawn by spiced pain. "I have always wanted your submission."

 

But, this tar-stained monster that hides in Zero's skin and armor, that smears his former confident grin in a devilish smirk, does not remember that Zero was always _soft_ with X, always held him as though he was precious, a sapphire amongst the rubble of a world that crumbled between their fingers. Even during their fights, even when their fates twisted their arms to point their weapons towards the other, X could always see a pause, a hesitation, and he could always bask in the knowledge that Zero loved him entirely.

 

Oh, now though, the lust in those red eyes and the pressure of a codpiece pressing insistently at his hips reminds X over and over in tolling chimes and funeral pyres that Zero is dead.

 

Dead, dead, _dead_ , his Zero is _dead,_ and his corpse is a shamble of a Messiah for a world hellbent on chaotic retribution. X would scream, he _should_ scream, for the very wires of his system freeze over at the realization that Omega is a false god, a deity masked in the dust of warriors and innocents long crushed and obliterated, who longs to break the last vestige of suffocating hope, to own him in all the ways Zero did. Not through the tenderness of kisses, not through the softness of their lovemaking, but through back-bending submission.

 

“He never asked me to submit," X grits out again because the chill loosens his tongue to fight even as claws pull apart his armor, leaving him exposed and nearly frightened. "He loved me! I was his equal, and I gave to him— he wasn’t a damn farce like you!”

 

With a pitiless rattle, Omega howls in laughter, the joints of his armor clattering in mere delight of such a proclamation.

 

The laughter barely dies down before the tongue hisses out another lie while that weight settles down, knees digging into the scraps of corpses that dared oppose a new law of land, “I told you before, my bluejay, that your big heart is your kindness and your weakness…”

 

There— there it is, that invasion, that pressing penetration that stops X’s core for an infinite second, having been taken off-guard with distraction of words, deft and cutting. Warning sirens trumpet again in echoing recoils along the synapses in his head, and he is taken now, the truth laying bare like him, a broken doll because his fear, the greatest of all, is true— that Zero’s truth would reveal itself this way.

 

"I made myself for your pleasure then remade myself after dying for your ideals, over and over. My love brought you this far, but now… you spit on me while still clinging to me as you did before this war, no, this purification of the earth.”

 

"No...!" And X cannot fight, can only writhe beneath Omega who snickers in the cold-blooded veracity that the great X is beneath him once more. "He didn’t— he didn’t—!"

 

A lofty croon in his ear, and a warning nip down his jaw. “I played your game, sweetest, I played every piece on the board that you determined, and you fell right into my arms,” then, a bite, hard and merciless into the pulp of his neck. “ _Mine.”_

 

_“X,” and instead of Omega’s ghastly brutality, it is Zero, glorious as golden sunshine in the lazy mornings, his voice dripping with adoration that blooms from the intoxication of heat that comes when he first slips into X to make them a whole being once again, “X…”_

 

His body is a traitor, growing wet and hot to allow Omega in because, really, X knows every crevice of that body like his very own. The memories lie thriving in his circuits, his mind betraying him, leaving him limp as he is rocked into over and over as the dim light of their quarters fill his thoughts of Zero’s moans, echoing with endearments he once pressed to X’s lip between their shared whispers.

 

Worst yet is when his core thrums in writhing delight as clawed hands catch under his knees to spread him further apart. To his embarrassment, he lets it.

 

_“I know now that I love you. I love you so damn much, X…”_

 

“No…” but X does not want this, not this way, not this hollow affair, this ruse of sex that he once held as the peak of intimacy between two lovers, but Omega does not budge, still forceful in his movements and grunts. In spite of his struggle, the once proud Hunter is forced further down, hips aligned as lips abruptly bit against his own to silence his denials.

 

His lips are tender, bitten and swollen, as Omega hisses against them, dark and vehement, “you were mine the moment you fell for me. _Submit_.”

 

It’s a glare of red that burns oil hot in X’s veins - artificial, yet natural to him. War has never come easy to him despite the buster on his arm, despite the justice that imbrues his core, but the command is enough to defy as he spits out with a raise of his hands to twist harshly into wild hair, “I’m not yours! He wanted me at his side… not beneath him like a whore.”

 

“Yet here you are,” retorts the beast as he heightens his thrust, drawing a reluctant half-mewl from his more reluctant lover, "beneath me, taking me like you're made for this, weak for me.”

 

X trembles, biting his lip with a sharp comprehension that he has been dragged into this hell where the flames lick a little too damn saccharine for him to truly beg for yielding. Must he admit that he has missed this, missed what they were before Zero disappeared to leave him to fix a world that doesn’t want to look for a solution? Must X admit that he wants nothing more than to give in to the luscious oaths of utopia through homicide if only it meant being with the man he thinks he can bring home?

 

There is a chamber in his heart that resounds with how much he longs for the ancient days lost in the code of discs and servers collecting dust in dilapidated bases, but a spark of a scan blinks in his vision, blurred as it may be, and he knows — an advantage is at his grasp.

 

“Maybe… _I’m_ your weakness?” X purrs with a curl of his tongue, and Omega stutters for a moment, red eyes small in an expanse of white as he stares down in disbelief at the kittenish tease in place of a soldier, the other’s mewls dagger sharp, “I always was, wasn’t I?”

 

The pause in the thrusting is enough to permit the re-syncing of his operative systems, X focusing that split second of relief to pour more reserve energy into repairing his head and cracked buster. It might be a folly to rely on a shot from his near-irreparable arsenal, the consequences dismal during this mockery of coupling, but hell, his heart was left broken on the borderline of the damage zone, so what did he expect?

 

X never expected to be laying beneath the corpse of his lover, spreading his hands over the platelets of his own chest to rub down along the curves of his hips to where their bodies come together between his thighs. He never expected to have to delve into his little box of secrets, glimpsing over the little hitches of Zero’s desires, so while Omega can gloat in boisterous laud all he wants, if there is just a speck of Zero still _there_ , maybe salvation is due for them yet.

 

A shot in the dark, this erotic tactic, but it works, Omega’s lips curl into a victorious sneer that X warily likens to a preying cat with a tiny bird for its meal.

 

“My sweetest,” is a crooning song that nearly unbinds the seams of X’s core, “I am always weak for you.”

 

And X gives in then, just for a moment, wrapping his arms around Omega’s— no, _Zero’s—_ neck as he’s pushed into once more. To his trained ear, the blue bot can already decipher from the grunts of his partner the tell all nearing of completion, a coming to an end while X steals a little pleasure for himself as he moans out in a mantra to the scattered heavens, “Zero, Zero, _Zero…!”_

 

 

_And while X is made sickened love to, he tries not to think of the clone that waits at the base that very minute, tries not to think of the other’s attempts to smile at X and only X, tries not to think of how he, with copied memories of a red warrior that melted at the sight of blue, mutters to X in the drone of silent nighttime, ‘I want to love you, too.’_

 

_It is a painful thing, the tiny, nearly missed nuances of ticks and responses that the clone does that makes X rock his hips up into this beast he pretends is his Zero so he can steal a few sweets that can be found in this shell of an apocalypse. Here he finds a crooked solace far away from the false touches along his shoulder down his back, from the near kisses that miss mere inches after a rough operation is completed— yet there is that hesitation the clone will undoubtedly carry, always, and X understands._

 

_X is a hard person to love, after all._

 

 

So lost in his own thoughts that suddenly there are palms, free of gauntlets for obliterating, cupping X’s cheeks to draw him into a kiss muddied with desperation stemmed from darkened devotion. Cotton static fills X’s head as their fucking stops, a mere temporary yield as Omega eyes him with the conflict that sows a seed of hope in X’s not-real lungs.

 

“I almost forgot… how beautiful you are.”

 

He shouldn’t dare— he can’t dare, but the admission is enough to stir him up closer.

 

“…Z?” X tries, voicing that damnable hope that floats all reasoning into the clouds, alleviating the grinding punishment years of wars have done to his soul. “Zero?”

 

Omega groans in pain, eyes shutting tight just before X is slowly pushed back down, failing to conceal the flash of brilliant blue pushing away murderous red.

 

“Don’t talk… just feel _me._ ”

 

A command of submission, but X gives it freely, wrapping around this beast again for this reprieve for both of their sakes. The pace is still rough, but lacks that biting brutality from earlier and, oh, X falls down that rabbit hole of dreams where Zero is at his side in that glimmering, pearlescent utopia around them, their hands bond in nothing short of wedded bliss.

 

“Close…”X finally pleads into the other's hair, fingers clenching into the threads of gold that spill along Omega's straining back. Fullness, spreading him apart to the point he swears he might tear, drawing his moans higher and louder, reachable only to the two of them during this coupling. “It feels like I'm on fire…!”

 

A spur of a half-chuckle intermingling with labored breaths rakes a shudder down the metal joints of his spine, making X swoon.

 

"You have never denied me before, bluejay," is licked along his neck up to be kissed along the plump of his bottom lip, "do not deny me now.”

 

X would rather be scalped off his parts than deny Zero, and the prompt is enough to draw out X's climax, limbs convulsing as he cries out for his lover in spite of the heat that drips into him. He is greedy, wanting every drop of it as he finally crashes down from the star-white high of a supernova that thrums between his legs.

 

_Reboot complete._

 

The alert pings in his head; his buster is operational.

 

Omega is so gone from the afterglow of their sex that he has yet to take hint that this little bird, his pretty prey, lays beneath him armed to the teeth as he moans hot nothings of how good of a fuck X is against the bruising bite left on his neck. “Dammit, I forgot… how much I want you next to me, beneath me… just want you to surrender to me, keep my bed warm for me…”

 

In the last days before sealing himself away for a years-long sleep, Zero once said that he would stop loving X when his core stopped. It means too much to feel that core pound through his chest, and is all the more reason X draws his buster to the beast’s head.

 

There is a light and a howl— and X’s eyes close on a chapter of his life that ends in the shambles of his fractured heart.

 

—

 

He falls to the floor the moment he’s back in base.

 

X, barely pieced together after shooting Omega down for just a breath of a moment, transfers back after a desperate call to command once he releases the block on his receiver. It had been so hard to accept, grueling even to step back and see the damage a close-range could do to his lover’s once handsome face, but the deed is done.

 

He feels hollow, slumped on the floor of a desolate lobby as he breathes out a swirling sadness ever painted blue. Zero is dead. He is dead, infuriatingly dead, another victim to a maker that has already fallen so many humans and reploids already. He is just another casualty, collateral damage, but X prays all the same that Zero is at rest where X himself cannot be.

 

But, he can never rest, and is that just the worst of it? To love so much, to care so much, and have it all stripped away to the bare bone? This fate is one of aching monotony, of endless bloodshed, of coolant and oil staining X’s hands that he cannot wash away— and he cannot even rely on his partner to shoulder the burden anymore.

 

It may be minutes, hours, hell, even days for all X cares, but he stays on the floor, the cool metal against his cheek as the poor lighting hums in effort to stay on. He knows now were he to have a wish, he would beg for the earth to swallow him whole, bury him in a grave to rest by Zero for an eternity, but regrets are high so silent he stays.

 

After a time, it all blurs together, X barely registering the taps of new model boots padding along the lobby way. In his misery, X truly could care less who has come to check on him, but when the person kneels down, there is a tone of red that shifts into the side of his vision and he is heartbroken all over again.

 

“X.” It is the clone, Zero’s clone, fashioned in a body for warfare the same as his predecessor, and God help X, his voice is so gentle like he is simply nudging the other from a long nap. “You’re injured.”

 

Were he to laugh, X is certain that this clone would take it wrongly, still unsure of social queues that took the real Zero years to learn after guidance from the blue bot, rather he sighs and draws up to his knees. “I know.”

 

The clone sighs, reluctant in action until his hands reach for X’s shoulders though one hand nearly drifted to his chin, making X cringe. The worst comes when X can pick up on the small little whirs of a scanner behind those dark blue eyes, and the hands on his body stiffen.

 

“Don’t,” X pleads, but it is a barely-felt request that whispers from the fragments of all the dreams his stupid younger self kept close in the cusp of his fingers, “just— don’t.”

 

Their usual tiffs since the clone’s awakening have been short and mediocre, reaching finite when X is given the right of say once given over to. This time it’s different, and the former Hunter can feel that in the edge of his nerves, an electric sting that charges the air.

 

“He hurt you,” and that is all not-Zero can grind out between his teeth even as the rage that brews beneath his even tone shakes him. It may before a smidge of time, but X appreciates the defensiveness, this wonderment of possession the clone has no stake in— at least not yet, for X is weak already, growing wearier by the day. It will be a matter of time before he falls again for the quirks of a body that carries memories not his to keep.

 

It is bitter bile in his throat, and needless, but X grouses, “I let him.”

 

The tremendous weight of his reply forces the clone to draw his hands away, but they form fists that press into the black expanse of his thighs. X feels sorry for him, having artificial feelings for someone that is so difficult, is so awful as he, and they both suffer for it. It would be so simple to believe this clone is Zero. Maybe soon the acceptance will come in a trickle of tepid water through his veins, but that time is not at hand, which is preferable.

 

Anger is still fresh in the other’s eyes, and X can see the conflict waging in the gaze, some kind of struggle to surmise the best course of action. It is most assuredly the soldier of his programming, but furthermore, the dormant vessel of a relationship that festers under X’s skin, same as the clone’s. There is an expectation of backlash, of yelling and maybe even a scuffle, but the strangest end occurs when the fury simmers down and there is the deepest regret in those eyes.

 

X’s core clenches tight, too tight, and he reaches out against better judgement, “no, no, it’s okay, I promise— it’s okay. I’m fine—.”

 

“I couldn’t protect you.” It’s sighed out in tomb-old exhaustion, “I can _never_ protect you.”

 

It is there in the crevices of a new voice box that there is a something old and decrepit, older than the clone and nearly as old as X. It reminds him of Omega, of his eyes turning back to that skyline blue in the most heated moments of their tryst, of someone who perhaps longs for X as abysmally as X grieves.

 

Mercy is a gift to be nurtured into a thriving thing, so X reaches out and touches a fist with the tips of his fingers in hopes to quell those worries with lukewarm pity.

 

“Zero— he,” but any words that he could utter in the isolation of their small world there in the base lobby is lost, tapering off into the rougher edges of a void where X does not know how to consider Zero and his clone. He can try again, swallowing thick as he inhales sharply, “Zero protected me countless times.”

 

“ _Me,_ ” the clone refutes firmly, turning the fist over so to catch X’s hand so that he can cradle it tenderly, “but I can’t protect you anymore— not from the world, and not from Omega.”

 

Long ago, X knows there was a time when he felt the same, when all he felt he could fight for was to protect Zero in spite of his power and his authority. A definitive, effective combat robot, and yet X felt that Zero was always too reckless with his moves, too forward into rushing into conflict with saber out to find a fight. X tried— oh, he tried countless times, when Zero’s parts were captured and when Zero went to board the shuttle to fly towards a falling colony to stop the pain, but always it would come back.

 

How low has he fallen to see it all come full circle?

 

“I was weak,” X presses into the air gently to put all the blame on his own back, and that is all that should be claimed. Perhaps there will be an argument, and for a twinge of gray regret, he might prefer one. It would be better than this, so much better than sitting in a muted calm before dissonance.

 

X waits with a purse of his lips, gazing over at the clone to assess the inevitable onslaught of reprimand, though for how those blue eyes stare down at the hand in his palm, X would think that instead there is a butterfly of azure graciously resting.

 

Fragile like a butterfly’s wings, he is not, but for a moment, with the passing of a frown on the other’s mouth, X can feel a thinning of security that might relay in passing, long tones that he is not as resilient as he once expected.

 

A tapping of armor against the floor strikes X from his thoughts as the clone grasps his hand to stand them both up, something so kind in the maneuvering before the world spins, and X is being carried outside of the base. Above them, the sky is still strangely clear, the stars barely blinking across a veil of navy blue that lulls the scant populous into a rigid slumber.

 

Verdant eyes, once curious and innocent, sharply glance about across the high wall of their bastion, the carnage that has dismantled the foundations and progressions of a thriving earth even evident from there.

 

X is unsure of what Zero’s clone is intending with all this, but it simply takes a sight of his eyes to see how much longing lies beneath the pools of nighttime blue. They are hardly Zero’s eyes, but there is a softness at the edges, an affectionate glaze that has X leaning tiredly along his shoulder.

 

Time has a reputation to be meaningless to X outside of seeing the humans he has sought to build a bridge to die out in droves over the decades he has been in sufferable operation. The sun and moon pass along in cyclical waltzes day in and day out, a routine that is only noticeable when the exhaustion of depleted reserves cracks into the metal of his skeleton— he wishes for bed, but man that holds him sucks his teeth— another quirk passed through a duplicate memory bank— and simply retorts.

 

“You are not weak.”

 

It should be ground breaking, but revelations are the same as happiness, subject to boredom after years of life wizening up the poor fools so eager to claw up the mud to experience anything worthwhile. X should have learned by now that love is a fickle process, that love is a weapon more than an olive branch. The tip of a dagger will always prick at his back, the edge of a blade along his through because love is weakness, but here he is again, falling ever into the gossamer web of loving Zero.

 

It is that crux that love forces him to carry, the nails of haphazard construction digging deeper into his spine as X reaches up to touch along that new jaw, thinking for just a moment he saw a spark of affection in the depths of night blue that watch him in bridled curiosity.

 

“… Have you decided upon a name?” X inquires to the humid air of nightly secrecy while the drifting loll of dawn dips her feather pen into the plum rays across the horizon, “something that is yours and yours alone?”

 

The clone shuffles his feet, a shy feat that would be adorable if X were not aware that he is still learning his new body, still sorting through memories not his to claim. Like a child growing into its own limbs, this clone must learn to be a hero not meant to be.

 

“I just know Zero. Is it so bad to just be that? To just be Zero for you?”

 

A silent pause, the weight of the world settling the burden heavier on top of his shoulders so that X resigns himself to this fate— this little quirk of winding path so graciously (horribly) offered. Here, he must stand at the fork, the rotting tree that once stood around as a proof of his firm love now swarmed with gnats and maggots feeding on rotten fruit.

 

He could take the path to his right, fester in the putrid pulp and let the slow drain of poison eat away until he is nothing but ash and scrap.

 

Rather, though, he could take to the left, pluck a few seeds from the musty meat of a delightful harvest and sow anew a budding love that need not end, but be reformed through fire and need. Below would surely be a grove for his lover, the same he so desperately would fall into were his pride not so infallible as it were just an hour ago, but surely another tree would grow, bind its roots deep into the dirt, and be just as prominently nurtured as its predecessor.

 

To the left, X thinks, and he murmurs more to his aching core, “I think that isn’t bad at all.”

 

 

_Both trees will die with thrashing roar of a wayward rocket and the muted click of a dusty seal, and loneliness will be a lover’s widowed veil to drape upon his shoulders. Forevermore must he hold in his hands the hilt of a saber once wielded by a soldier he loved more than the stars themselves. Assuredly, his lover will never come home from war, will never awaken from a slumber so deep he does not dream, so the light too shall fade until rest is all he longs for in the end._

_And, yet, history is doomed to repeat itself, same as rotten trees decay into budding blooms of tomorrow._


End file.
